


of marshmallows and train wrecks

by babysteps



Category: All For the Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Fluff, M/M, the foxes - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-24
Updated: 2016-03-24
Packaged: 2018-05-28 21:32:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6346153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babysteps/pseuds/babysteps
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Andrew eats an entire carton of ice cream (but not the marshmallows) and Neil is a little disgusted by it (but not the marshmallows).</p>
            </blockquote>





	of marshmallows and train wrecks

Neil watched, mesmerized, as the entire carton of Rocky Road ice cream he had bought earlier that day disappeared into the tiny form of Andrew seated in front of him.

The sun was hanging low in the sky, and Neil had just finished his sensible dinner of a peanut butter and jelly. Andrew was still eating his dinner, which could be described as not very sensible, and also cold enough that Neil could feel the bite of it even from where he sat. The sound of Andrew’s spoon scraping the bottom of the carton punctured the silence hugging the pair, and soon another chocolate mound disappeared into the dark of Andrew’s mouth.

Neil blinked.

He scratched his arm.

He blinked again.

And suddenly the ice cream was gone completely, remembered only by the tiny hill lodged in the corner of the carton where Andrew had banished all of the marshmallows.

Neil stared at the pile, wondering how anyone could hate marshmallows. When Neil and his mother drifted into obscure diners with the cold winds of the winter months, sometimes his mother would order him hot chocolate, and sometimes it would come topped with tiny, sugary marshmallows. So used to the flavors of cheap ramen and spam was Neil, that he would always eat one marshmallow, and then another, and then another, until suddenly his mother was berating him for letting his drink grow cold while he was indulging his sweet tooth.

Marshmallows were sweet, and Neil had a childhood bereft of sweet things.

And so Neil liked marshmallows.

Andrew raised an unimpressed eyebrow at Neil’s staring as he casually tongued the rest of the dessert from the silver spoon grasped loosely in his hand.

“Neil,” he said. “It’s ice cream. I’m sure you saw the boxes in the gas stations where you bought your dinners when you were playing hide and go seek with your father.”

Neil scoffed and lunged for the carton, sights set intently on the sugar hill and mind determinedly ignoring the slight constriction he felt in his chest at Andrew’s words. Logically, he knew Andrew didn’t mean the hurt of them maliciously. Andrew was simply taking the past he had hidden away for so long in binders and jean pockets and casually introducing it to the vicious normalcy of his present. No, not malicious. It was a very Andrew way of looking out for Neil, even if it stung around the edges.

Andrew lazily moved the box to the left, just barely out of the reach of Neil’s fingertips. Neil twisted his hand and tried to make another attempt, but Andrew had read his thoughts in the quirks of his face and had already moved it up out of the reach of Neil’s grabby hands. Defeated, Neil retracted his arm with a huff and pulled his legs to his chest, crossing one arm over his shins and grabbing the other at the wrist, holding it in place.

“It’s almost offensive how you can eat that shit and still make it from the sideline to the goal without passing out,” Neil drawled, very obviously eyeing the defined muscles stretching the grey of the man’s shirt in front of him.

It was Andrew’s turn to scoff. Neil’s lips tugged up at the sound, and he didn’t bother trying to hide his smile or to stop his eyes from roaming Andrew’s form. They both knew his comment was completely untrue. Andrew’s muscles were beautiful, in an acute sense of the word.

Andrew watched Neil trace the lines of his chest with a blank face. Slowly, he moved the ice cream carton and spoon off to his side and wiped his condensation-wet hands on his jeans. He then very deliberately mimicked Neil’s form and pulled his own knees to his chest, blocking the line of Neil’s gaze with a double wall of shins and arms.

Neil pouted.

Andrew looked bored.

Neil uncrossed his arms.

Andrew’s eyes widened marginally.

Neil slowly moved his arms in front of him, shifting the weight of his body from his center to his hands on the ground in front of his knees until he was on all fours.

Neil moved slowly towards Andrew.

Neil stopped a foot in front of Andrew, breathing only a little heavier (and not entirely as a result of the change in position). He pulled in a breath through his nose, hoping Andrew wouldn’t notice the small delight he took in the action. He could smell sugar and fudge and chocolate. He could smell the warm coffee they had shared together and the fresh scent of the soap from the shower Andrew had earlier. He could smell the mint from Andrew’s toothpaste and the slight hint of cinnamon that clung to all of Andrew’s sweaters.

It smelled of home, really.

And what a heavy word home was, Neil noted distantly. Andrew was small and blonde, hazel eyed and traumatized, but he was the only real home Neil had known. There had been no place for a home in the bullet shaped holes of his lifetime of retreat. Home was not a word that Neil’s mother had ever shown him in the panicked fists and sharp pangs of fear that left their warbled mark in the back corridor of his thoughts. But Andrew was a cool blanket wrapped around the horror of Neil’s rotted mind, and Andrew was the weight that Neil felt tying down his forever-running shoes.

Andrew was home.

And Andrew was here, in front of him, body outlined with sharp corners and rigid planes. His form whispered _caution_ , but his eyes were entirely warm, like the logs in a fire.

“Yes or no,” Neil breathed.

The corner of Andrew’s eyes tightened marginally, and with a slight rise of the chest, his body drained of tension, face smoothing out and knees dropping so his ankles crossed. He moved pale hands slowly to frame the mangled face in front of him. He blinked once, twice, staring intently into the ice of Neil’s eyes.

(They were Neil’s eyes. Not Nathaniel’s. Not Nathan’s.)

“Yes,” Andrew said.

Neil felt his heart jump just once, still not altogether used to _this_ – this fluttering of eyelashes, this meeting of rough, unshaven jaw with smooth, this clack of sharp teeth. Intimacy is a foreign thing to children baptized with pain. They learned the shape of it together, slowly, one part of _this_ at a time.

Neil was pulled from the cover of his thoughts when Andrew’s lips touched his. It was a soft kiss, different from the messy meetings before on stone rooftops. He leaned into it, reaching his hand up to lightly rest over Andrew’s. Andrew’s fingers briefly pressed a little harder to the side of his face in response. He was here. He was home.

They stayed like this, lightly kissing, until Neil accidentally hit the ice cream carton and knocked it over when he tried to move his body closer to Andrew. Andrew’s hand shot out and caught the carton before it could fall and stain the carpet. He pulled back from Neil’s kiss and wandered his lips downwards, stealthily moving the box further from Neil and closer to his own body, a preemptive strike in the continued protection of the dorm’s cleanliness.

“Neil the train wreck,” he whispered with a slight upturn of the lips, mouthing the words along the hard cut of Neil’s jaw.

Neil let out a breathy laugh.

“I thought I was nothing?”

“You are. You just happen to be a very irritating sort of nothing.”

This time Neil let out a real laugh and pulled Andrew’s face away from his jaw and towards his lips, kissing him breathless.

The sun began its final descent as they kissed, casting long shadows that gave the room a disquieting hue. Everything looked different, alien, but Neil wasn’t afraid. He had given Andrew his battered heart, given him his body, given him the blood that sometimes seemed to poison him from the inside out. And still the blonde man held him, still kept him in the dorm like an anchor, and always pushed the whispers of fear firmly behind an iron door.

He had Andrew. Andrew had him.

And that was everything.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading !


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